Berend Jan Challa

Berend-Jan Challa was born and raised in Amsterdam. His French ancestor Etienne Challa (Huguenot) settled there around 1600. He has been living for 25 years with his family in the town of Bergen, between the tulip fields and near the sea.

Since 1977 he is active as a professional artist and zeedichter. His poetry is visual and his art is poetry. His work is very versatile, including installations, projects and industrial and graphic design (winner of the Special Award for Excellence Good Industrial Design and the ABN-AMRO Creativity Award). Using the latest digital cameras (Hasselblad, Canon, Nikon) he specialises in fine-art photos (Hasselblad Master nomination). A constantly recurring theme in his work is love, because he thinks that finding love is one of the biggest challenges for humanity. Examples include the project “The walk of love” on the boulevard in Kijkduin, graphic work “Find Love” and the series tulip photos that he created for the Keukenhof.